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Author: knutson4

Many of Wisconsin’s nursing students are hired months before they graduate as desperate need continues

Posted on
Appleton Post-Crescent

Noted: At the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of nursing, Associate Deans of Academic Affairs Barbara Pinekenstein and Lisa Bratzke said several students graduating this year had already accepted job offers at the end of the fall semester.

Admissions applications are also starting to stack up. Though it may be too soon to tell if the pandemic has caused more people to be interested in nursing as a career, Rentmeester said 367 people applied for Bellin College’s undergraduate and graduate nursing programs for the upcoming fall, up from a usual of about 320 pre-pandemic.

UW Marching Band to hold first spring concert after COVID-19 cancellations

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

After making it through the 2020 football season without fans, Corey Pompey said the feeling of his marching band returning to a Camp Randall Stadium full of Badger fans for the first time in 2021 was indescribable.

“For a large chunk of the band, they (had) never marched in the stadium before,” said Pompey, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Marching Band. “They never had that crowd response.”

Behind-the-scenes look at Great Lakes shipwrecks-focused video game

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

Noted: The game was produced by PBS Wisconsin Education, Wisconsin Sea Grant, and Field Day Learning Games — an educational game developer within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research and Wisconsin educators. It complements the PBS Wisconsin Shipwrecks! documentary and virtual reality experience exploring wrecks on the bottom of Wisconsin’s Great Lakes.

Liquid brine clears Wisconsin highways faster, study says

Posted on
FOX6 News Milwaukee

The use of liquid brine is more effective at keeping highways safe during the winter months, a new report says.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Lab looked at data from 143 storms occurring in 10 counties across Wisconsin. It compared brine-cleared routes to those nearby cleared with a traditional granular rock-salt method. The researchers found use of liquid brine in winter highway maintenance cleared Wisconsin highways faster, provided better friction on roadways, and reduced overall salt usage.

How Wisconsin’s colleges and businesses can partner to transform the state’s workforce

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In the last few years, northeastern Wisconsin workers and companies have told us they want education targeted for today’s students, employees, and parents. They want education that leads directly to good jobs. We agree. On April 11, our two campuses, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, announced a plan to meet their needs.

Black Oxygen: Grieving in a pandemic is difficult with DeVon Wilson

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Madison 365

DeVon Wilson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the School of Letters and Science at UW-Madison, experienced deep loss and grief near the beginning of the pandemic with the passing of one of his best friends. He says, “grieving during a pandemic is difficult … I learned that I couldn’t do it alone.” In this episode of Black Oxygen, DeVon discusses his journey to Wisconsin, the difference in community needs between Beloit and Madison, and his experience of navigating grief after losing a dear friend. Near the end of the episode, DeVon shares, “grief is an indicator of the positive impact folks had on your life.”

Tommy Thompson won’t launch a fifth campaign for Wisconsin governor

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tommy Thompson has decided not to launch a fifth campaign for governor.

Thompson — who was elected governor of Wisconsin four times, served as President George W. Bush’s health secretary, and led the state’s system of universities through a pandemic — said Monday he has decided against a new run for his old job but believes he would have been a formidable candidate.

Wisconsin Supreme Court chooses maps drawn by Republicans in new redistricting decision

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Robert Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert, said the court’s decision had reinforced a map that was “strikingly” gerrymandered.

“And it means that although this state is often a 50-50 state one where Democrats have frequently managed to win statewide races, they are going to have virtually no chance of taking control of the Legislature,” Yablon said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin.

Minority Health Month with UW All Of Us

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TMJ4

April is Minority Health Month. In recognition of the month, the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships is getting as much information as possible out about health to communities. The Center houses two major programs, the UW All of Us Milwaukee site and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute Regional Milwaukee Office. Dr. Bashir Easter, associate director for UW All of Us Milwaukee and Dr. Nia Norris, associate director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute and administrative manager with UW All of Us
Milwaukee join us to talk about their efforts they believe are crucial to keeping the community healthy.

Breaking the mold: UW-Madison geneticist bridges art and science, partakes in National Mall display

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

For years, Ahna Skop didn’t feel like she fit the mold of a scientist.

She comes from a family of artists. Her father, Michael Skop, was a pupil of a famous Croatian artist, Ivan Meštrović, and her dad brought in students from all over the world to an art school they had at their house. Her mother, Kathleen Prince Skop, is a ceramicist and retired high school art teacher.

“Here I am as a scientist,” said the geneticist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You might assume that I inherited the recessive gene for science.”

Community health partners launch ConnectRx Wisconsin, a care coordination system centered on Black women

Posted on
Madison 365

Quoted: “It is an honor and a privilege to be here today to celebrate a revolutionary change, a revolutionary paradigm shift,” said Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor of population health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and co-chair of the Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance of Dane County. “It is a program and this is a process that’s going to center the lives of Dane County’s Black women and birthing people in solving our persistent and frankly shameful disparities in birth outcomes.”

 

What if the government filled out your tax form for you?

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

Quoted: “I do believe the U.S. has one of the more convoluted structures and also requires a lot more effort to understand,” says Cliff Robb, who teaches about personal finance and human behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.. “It forces individuals to engage much more directly with the tax system than other industrialized countries.”

Even for people who don’t pay fees to a tax preparer or for tax prep software, there’s a significant “opportunity cost” to filing, he says.

“Most people are going to take a weekend or a couple of days,” says Robb. And it’s not just time. “It creates more stress than is necessary, I believe.”

Bison: The biggest, baddest animal in Wisconsin (sort of)

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: The big mammals — mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers — came later. They were Ice Age creatures, living in Wisconsin from between 2.5 million and 11,500 years ago.

“It’s a little bit like yesterday for a geologist,” Brooke Norstead, assistant director of the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, said.

And just like yesterday, there was a big animal roaming that huge ice sheet — so vast you could walk to the North Pole on it without touching land — that may sound familiar.

“There was an animal called a stag moose,” Norstead said. “Imagine a supersize moose, with even more interesting antlers.”

Warren Porter is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies animal shape and size.

“One of the evolutionary benefits of being a large or very large animal is … that you don’t have to deal with as much threat of predation and may be able to better defend your young,” Porter said.

Family, colleagues & community celebrate life of beloved UW professor and launch of Tejumola Olaniyan Foundation

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Madison 365

The family of the late Teju Olaniyan, a beloved UW-Madison professor who died suddenly on Nov. 30, 2019, honored his legacy with a celebration of his life on April 9 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, and launched a nonprofit in his name that will focus on preserving and continuing strands of his contributions to higher education.

Gap between students’ college costs and state and federal aid in Wisconsin has grown, report says

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

The amount of tuition costs at Wisconsin colleges covered by state and federal financial aid for students has shrunk over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

The average amount of federal Pell grants and state Wisconsin grants together covered 91.4 percent of tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002, for example, but only 69 percent in 2021.

Team at UW–Madison creates material six times tougher than Kevlar

Posted on
Spectrum News

A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a material that is tougher than Kevlar, which is found in bulletproof vests.

It’s a project they hope can help save lives.

The material in small scale is almost comparable to the look of electrical tape. However, it’s much different and much stronger. So what’s inside that makes it so strong? Engineering and physics assistant professor Ramathasan Thevamaran has the answer.

“It’s a nano fiber mat made out of carbon nanotubes and Kevlar nano fibers,” Thevamaran said.

How to help Wisconsin’s disappearing native bees in your yard

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Native plant curator Susan Carpenter with the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison said they detected the rusty patched at the Arboretum about 10 years ago. “That started us on this voyage of discovery,” she said. When the rusty patched was declared endangered, she said, “people just went crazy on that.”

In honor of Milwaukee Day, here are 14 people making a difference in our city

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Xela Garcia helps young Milwaukee Latinos see themselves in art and education.

Garcia grew up on Milwaukee’s south side and has served as executive director of the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts for five years.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she minored in Chicano/Latina studies and American Indian studies and saw herself reflected in the class readings.

“It brought me back to that feeling of empowerment, of feeling seen,” she said. “This was something that was me.”

Wisconsin sees sharp increase in Type 2 diabetes among children, according to UW Health Kids data

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin doctors are seeing a steady increase in the number of children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes — a disease that primarily affects adults — which may be linked to COVID-19.

Data released last week by UW Health Kids shows a nearly 200 percent increase in the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes over the past four years.

While this is a trend medical experts have noticed for years, Dr. Elizabeth Mann, a pediatric endocrinologist and director of the Type 2 Diabetes Program at UW Health Kids, said it’s taken a worrisome turn recently.

‘We’re just trying to live’: Trans youth, families in Wisconsin struggle in contentious political environment

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Noted: Anne Marsh serves in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Her 8-year-old son Ryan is transgender.

“Our son has grown up in a household where from the day he shared with us who he is, he has faced nothing but unconditional love and welcoming and celebration of who he is,” Anne said. “How do you teach a child that the world is going to perceive them differently and treat them differently? It’s a hard conversation to have with a young child as a parent.”

UW free speech survey, Church architecture, The story of Fredric March

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

We hear from one of the professors behind the UW system’s planned free speech survey on its campuses. Later, we talk about the career of Wisconsin actor Frederic March and the removal of his name from a campus theater at UW-Madison. Plus, a Milwaukee filmmaker talks about his new documentary about the architecture of sacred buildings.

An argument against removing Fredric March’s name from UW campus buildings

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

In 2018 and 2020, the name of actor and famous UW-Madison alum, Fredric March, was removed from two University of Wisconsin campus buildings. And in the years since, that decision has gotten pushback from prominent actors, historians and civil rights advocates. We talk to a freelance journalist and public historian about why he says the decision was a mistake.

More than Just Rocks: A Tour of the University of Wisconsin Museum of Geology

Posted on
WORT FM

When people think about geology, most people will think of well… rocks. But the geology museum on the UW-Madison campus shows that geology is much more than rocks, it’s rocks from space, bones, and fossilized dino-droppings.
Last month, WORT reporter Andie Barrow went to the Museum of Geology to learn what makes the museum special.

Wisconsin lags the country in terms of investing in college financial aid, report finds

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s stagnant — and in some cases declining — investment in state financial aid has led to college students and their families having to pay for a larger portion of the cost of a degree, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

The policy forum’s report, issued Tuesday, is the latest in a series of analyses by the forum that have sought to dive into the challenges the state’s colleges and universities face in preparing the workforce of tomorrow amid declining taxpayer support and, in many cases, declining enrollment trends.

The nonpartisan research center found that state lawmakers have not prioritized financial aid in recent state budgets. Instead — in the University of Wisconsin System’s case — they took the approach of freezing tuition for in-state undergraduates for nearly a decade.

Doctors and volunteers pack medical supplies to send to Ukraine

Posted on
CBS 58

Doctors and volunteers in Wisconsin spent Saturday packing and sorting medical supply donations. The shipments will go to Ukraine to aid military and community hospitals during the ongoing war with Russia.

Dr. Nataliya Uboha is an oncologist at UW Carbone Cancer Center. She is involved in the efforts to get resources to Ukraine and she says the effort is personal. Dr. Uboha up in Lviv, Ukraine has been living in the U.S. for more than 25 years. She came here by herself so the majority of her family has been in Ukraine all these years.

“When the war started, we really worked hard on getting my family over here,” she said. Keeping her family safe is top of mind but she also wants to do her part to get resources to her home country, including getting involved in a medical drive for Ukraine.

Gov. Tony Evers vetoes Republican education bills related to ethnic studies, charters, masking

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Evers vetoed five higher education bills, several of which were a reflection of major cultural and political debates of the time.

Among those was Assembly Bill 884, which would have required the University of Wisconsin System to accept a course on the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights to satisfy the diversity or ethnic studies requirement in place for core general education requirements.

With interim chancellor quitting in protest and questions about funding, UW System free speech survey postponed

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A University of Wisconsin System survey of students on the highly-politicized topic of free speech on campus has been delayed following weeks of fallout and the resignation of a chancellor.

Tim Shiell, director of UW-Stout’s Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation, sent an email Wednesday to UW System’s interim president, Michael Falbo, to say the survey would be delayed until fall 2022. UW System officials released the email to reporters Thursday.

What more at-home COVID-19 tests mean for Wisconsin’s pandemic surveillance

Posted on
PBS Wisconsin

Noted: With rapid at-home tests becoming much more widely available since late 2021, an unknown but potentially large number of positive test results are going unreported. While this dynamic may pose a challenge to public health officials tracking COVID-19, the challenge is not insurmountable. That’s according to Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The fact that we have home-based testing is a good thing,” Sethi said. “While it may compromise our ability to have a good record of cases that are in the community, we don’t necessarily want to abandon this very important way that people can test and take action, so we have to find a workaround.”

Big bucks for good grades: UW student-athletes soon will be compensated for academic achievement

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Members of the University of Wisconsin athletic department – from administrators to coaches – routinely tout the school’s academic standing as a selling point for recruits and a source of pride.

UW officials plan to back up their words with action.

UW is among only 22 FBS schools currently with plans to compensate student-athletes for academic achievement.

Report ties COVID-19 deaths to poverty, systemic policy failures

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

Quoted: The report’s findings confirm other research that has shown the link between poverty and COVID-19, says Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin economist who researches the impact of race and economics on health.

“This is not about individual behavior,” Green said in an interview. “It’s about what kinds of social conditions place people at risk.”

Early in the Wisconsin pandemic, outbreaks occurred in the meatpacking industry in Brown County. “And because of the way our occupational system is structured, they were disproportionately likely to be Hispanic immigrants,” Green says. “And they were working under conditions that were not properly regulated, that were not safe, when it comes to trying to prevent COVID.”